by Claude McKay
29 McKay mentions Litvinov’s role in international diplomacy around the Italo-Ethiopian War in Harlem: Negro Metropolis, 226. For more information on Litvinov’s career, see Albert Resis, “The Fall of Litvinov: Harbinger of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact,” Europe-Asia Studies 52, no. 1 (2000); Geoffrey Roberts, “The Fall of Litvinov: A Revisionist View,” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 4 (1992): 639–57.
30 The quotation comes from James W. Ford, “Litvinoff Takes a Ride,” Harlem Liberator (November 25, 1933): 3. William R. Scott notes that although the Soviet Union eventually came to protest the Italian invasion, Litvinov’s initial silence at the League of Nations despite the growing tension in the spring of 1935 was taken by many African American observers as a premeditated betrayal of African sovereignty, and a reneging by the Comintern on its declared commitment to national self-determination. See Scott, The Sons of Sheba’s Race: African-Americans and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1941 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 124. Some of the other period coverage in the Communist-affiliated black press includes “Ethiopia and Soviet Russia: Litvinoff, Soviet Diplomat in the ‘League’ Is Real Thorn in Mussolini’s Side,” Negro Liberator (September 2, 1935): 5; “Soviet Supports Ethiopia,” Negro Liberator (September 16, 1935): 2; “Maxim Litvinoff Arrives Here,” Harlem Liberator (November 11, 1933): 1.
31 See Cooper, Claude McKay, 297.
32 See Cooper, Claude McKay, 298; and Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (New York: Knopf, 1978).
33 Cooper, Claude McKay, 298.
34 Claude McKay, “Looking Forward—,” New York Amsterdam News (May 13, 1939): 13.
35 For an extended reading of the ways these sorts of historical transpositions capture the “archival sensibility” of McKay’s approach in the novel, see Cloutier, “Amiable with Big Teeth: The Case of Claude McKay’s Last Novel.”
36 On Bayen, see Joseph Harris, African-American Reactions to the War in Ethiopia, 1936–1941 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), 120.
37 Quoted in William R. Scott, “Malaku E. Bayen: Ethiopian Emissary to Black America, 1936–1941,” Ethiopia Observer 15, no. 2 (1972). Available online at https://tezetaethiopia.wordpress.com/2005/06/18/malaku-e-bayen-ethiopian-emissary-to-black-america/. Accessed 15 April 2016. See also Harris, African-American Reactions to the War in Ethiopia, 122–23.
38 Scott, “Malaku E. Bayen: Ethiopian Emissary to Black America.” For more on how some of the Ethiopian aid organizations may have paved the way for the Popular Front in the United States, see Fronczak, “Local People’s Global Politics: A Transnational History of the Hands Off Ethiopia Movement of 1935.”
39 On the Ethiopian World Federation, see Harris, African-American Reactions to the War, 127 ff.; and William A. Shack, “Ethiopia and Afro-Americans: Some Historical Notes, 1920–1970,” Phylon 35, no. 2 (2nd Quarter, 1974): 149.
40 There is a photograph of Bayen facing page 113 in McKay’s Harlem: Negro Metropolis, and he is also discussed in the text (pages 176–77). The caption reads: “In 1937 Harlem welcomes Lij Araya Abebe (left) and Dr. Malaku Bayen (right), representatives of Emperor Haile Selassie.” The Dutton archive includes a letter from Margaret H. Jacobsen in the editorial department at the publisher E. P. Dutton to Dorothy Bayen at the Ethiopian World Federation, in which Jacobsen requests confirmation that “you have agreed to let him use this picture, and it is our understanding that this is a personal arrangement between you and Mr. McKay and that we are not involved financially in the transaction.” Jacobsen, letter to Bayen, 24 July 1940, “Harlem, 1940” Folder, Box 10, E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc. Records, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library. Bayen replied on 25 July “to confirm that I have agreed to let Mr. McKay use the picture.”
41 See Harris, African-American Reactions to the War, 79; William R. Scott, The Sons of Sheba’s Race: African-Americans and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1941 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 117.
42 See “United Ethiopia Council Formed,” New York Amsterdam News (February 1, 1936): 1; “Zaphiro to Seek Ethiopian Funds: Will Visit 28 Cities in Quest of $500,000,” New York Amsterdam News (March 14, 1936): 11.
43 Harris, African-American Reactions to the War in Ethiopia, 70.
44 Scott, The Sons of Sheba’s Race, 116; Harris, African-American Reactions to the War, 73–74; S. K. B. Asante, “The Afro-American and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, 1934–1936,” Race 15, no. 2 (1973): 173.
45 Scott, 119. See also “Zaphiro Called Back to London,” New York Amsterdam News (March 21, 1936): 1; “Honors Zaphiro Before Sailing,” New York Amsterdam News (March 21, 1936): 11.
46 Dan Burley, Chicago Defender (January 9, 1937): 26, quoted in Scott, 120.
47 Huggins was the vice chairman of United Aid for Ethiopia. See “United Ethiopia Council Formed,” New York Amsterdam News (February 1, 1936): 1.
48 On Huggins’s role in the 7 March 1935 meeting at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, see Ralph Crowder, “Willis Nathaniel Huggins (1886–1941): Historian, Activist, and Community Mentor,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 30, no. 2 (July 2006): 131; Joseph Fronczak, “Local People’s Global Politics: A Transnational History of the Hands Off Ethiopia Movement of 1935,” 252; “Ethiopia Unity Rallies Harlem,” Negro Liberator (March 15, 1935): 1, 2. According to historian William Scott, the speakers included a remarkable array of black intellectual, political, and religious leaders (Huggins, Alfred L. King, Joel A. Rogers, James W. Ford, Arthur Reid, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr.) with affiliations across the political spectrum, from Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association to the Communist Party. See Scott, The Sons of Sheba’s Race, 110.
49 Scott, The Sons of Sheba’s Race, 117.
50 “Ethiopian Tragedy to Prove Spur for Negro Unity, Observers Hold,” New York Amsterdam News (May 9, 1936): 13.
51 Willis N. Huggins, preface to Introduction to African Civilizations, by Huggins and John G. Jackson (1937; repr., Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1999), 15. Huggins writes: “Mr. Claude McKay, the novelist, recently returned from a long stay in North Africa, cleared up many points in regard to that area.”
52 “135th Street Library Notes,” New York Amsterdam News (December 31, 1938): 7.
53 Cooper, Claude McKay, 297. On Seifert’s life and career, see Elmer W. Dean’s odd hagiography, An Elephant Lives in Harlem (New York: Ethiopian Press, n.d.); and especially the detailed biographical note on the Barbados-born Seifert’s life and career as a Garveyite, bibliophile, and independent historian in The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers, Vol 1: 1826–August 1919, ed. Robert A. Hill (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 226 n. 3. Seifert organized his extensive collection of rare books into a research library he named the Ethiopian Research School of History, and also wrote about Ethiopian history: see, for example, Seifert, The Negro’s or Ethiopian’s Contribution to Art (New York: Ethiopian Historical Publishing Co., 1938); Seifert, “Who Are the Ethiopians?,” Box 46, Folder 17–18, John Henrik Clarke Papers, Schomburg Center, NYPL.
54 McKay, letter to Max Eastman, 24 August 1934, collected in The Passion of Claude McKay, 199.
55 See Robert A. Hill, “On Collectors, Their Contributions to the Documentation of the Black Past,” in Black Bibliophiles and Collectors: Preservers of Black History, ed. Elinor des Verney Sinnette, W. Paul Coates, and Thomas C. Battle (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1990), 47–56.
56 For a discussion of historical reports of “leopard men” across various parts of West Africa in the early twentieth century and a useful discussion of the ways the phenomenon was linked to the “shifting features of the colonial political landscape,” see David Pratten, The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria (London: International African Institute/Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 16.
57 Cooper, Claude McKay, 340.
5
8 Even the titles of his articles and editorials give a sense of the range of his concerns in the late 1930s: McKay, “Dynamite in Africa: Are the ‘Popular Fronts’ Suppressing Colonial Independence?” Common Sense 7 (March 1938): 11; McKay, “Native Liberation Might Have Been Stopped: The Franco Revolt,” New Leader (February 18, 1939): 2, 5, reprinted in The Passion of Claude McKay, 285–89; McKay, “Everybody’s Doing It: Anti-Semitic Propaganda Fails to Attract Negroes; Harlemites Face Problems of All Other Slum Dwellers,” New Leader (May 20, 1939): 5–6; McKay, “Pact Exploded Communist Propaganda Among Negroes,” New Leader (September 23, 1939): 4–7; McKay, “McKay Urges that New Leader Be Used as War Issues Forum,” New Leader (October 7, 1939); McKay, “Morocco: Nerve Center of Nations’ Colonial Power Politics,” New Leader (November 11, 1939): 4; McKay, “Morocco: Duce Uses Anti-Semitism to Win Moslems for Fascism,” New Leader (November 18, 1939); McKay, “Paul Robeson Backs War on Finns, Ignores Soviet Threat to All Minorities,” New Leader (January 20, 1940).
59 Cooper, Claude McKay, 327–28.
60 McKay, “A Little Lamb to Lead Them: A True Narrative,” The African: Journal of African Affairs (May–June 1938): 107–8, 112.
61 In the end, McKay and Cullen decided not to take over the editorship. See Cooper, Claude McKay, 328. Also see the “Announcement!” under the table of contents in The African: Journal of African Affairs (May–June 1938), which reports that “beginning with the next number of THE AFRICAN the editorship will be taken over by Claude McKay, the eminent poet and novelist and former editor of the old LIBERATOR, who will bring to his new work a ripe experience gained from extensive travels and keen observation of social and political movements . . . Mr. McKay will have as his associate, his fellow-craftsman, Countee Cullen, at one time assistant editor of OPPORTUNITY: A JOURNAL OF NEGRO LIFE.” In the next issue, there is a small notice explaining that “due to reasons not anticipated, the world renowned post-novelists Claude McKay and Countee Cullen, cannot now serve in the capacities of Editor and Associate Editor respectively as announced in the last issue of THE AFRICAN.” The African: Journal of African Affairs (July–August 1938): 122. A letter from Cullen to McKay gives us a glimpse into the reasons their editorship takeover fell through: “I am very anxious to know what finally transpired in connection with The African. It was a great disappointment to me that we could not make a go of it, but it was impossible to work with such narrow-minded people. They were interested in propaganda only.” Cullen, letter to McKay, 24 July 1938, Box 2, Folder 53, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
62 McKay, “Pact Exploded Communist Propaganda Among Negroes,” New Leader (September 23, 1939): 4.
63 McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis, 188.
64 McKay, “Claude McKay versus Powell,” New York Amsterdam News (November 6, 1937): 4.
65 “Claude M’Kay, Author, Decries Inroads Made by Communists,” New York Amsterdam News (September 17, 1938): A3.
66 McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis, 203. He makes the same point in similar language earlier in the book: the Communists’ “primary aim has been radically to exploit the Negro’s grievances. Therefore they use their influence to destroy any movement which might make for a practical amelioration of the Negro’s problems” (196).
67 Alice, letter to McKay, 18 June 1941, Box 7, Folder 240, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
68 This common phrase is often traced back to the sermon recounted in Matthew 7:15, in which Jesus says, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
69 McKay, “Pact Exploded Communist Propaganda Among Negroes,” New Leader (September 23, 1939): 4, 7. He writes: “Two years ago, I voiced the danger of Negroes coming under the control of Moscow dominated Communists exploiting their grievances . . . I thought that the Negro group was being dangerously misled. It profoundly shocked me that a minority group, subject to intolerance and persecution, as the American Negro, should be lured by treacherous propaganda to support and defend one of the most intolerantly tyrannical governments in the world.”
70 McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis, 251.
71 McKay, “Everybody’s Doing It: Anti-Semitic Propaganda Fails to Attract Negroes,” New Leader (May 20, 1939): 5–6.
72 In Harlem: Negro Metropolis, McKay describes the gullibility of black intellectuals in language that recalls the title phrase: “While many of their outstanding white colleagues wisely ran to save themselves when the Communists ripped off their masks and flashed daggers, the Negroes stood emotionally fixed like the boy on the burning deck” (259). Similarly, McKay’s 1943 “Cycle” sequence includes a number of poems denouncing what he considered to be attempts by the Communist Party to manipulate black political organizations for propagandistic ends. For example, in poem 26, McKay writes: “Of all the sects I have the Communists, / Who harvest the misery of mankind to build / A new religion, because the ancient mists / Obscure our vision and our eyes are filled! . . . The Communists, blind leaders of the blind, / Manipulating God and politics, / Brazenly hold forth to deceive mankind / With potpourri of clever Marxian tricks . . .” See McKay, “The Cycle,” Complete Poems, 254. For other poems in the sequence concerning the Communist influence, see 247, 255, 269.
73 Elliott B. Macrae, letter to McKay, 20 January 1941, Box 8, Folder 259, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
74 Ledger Book no. 4, May 1939–April 1943, Financial Records, Box 16, E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc. Records, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library. The ledger (which is a record of Dutton’s payments during this period) notes regular payments for $25 to McKay starting on 31 January 1941. The checks are sent first on a weekly basis, then slow to every other week from April to June, and then resume as weekly payments in July. The last payment is dated 25 July 1941. The Claude McKay Collection at the Beinecke also confirms this arrangement, through the preservation of notes that accompanied the payments. In the Beinecke papers, the last trace of this arrangement are notes dated 24 June and 25 June 1941, the first confirming that Dutton would continue advance payments up to $500 (the note says that by the time of this letter, $350 had been paid), and the second addressed to McKay’s New York address, asking him to call the office (to confirm whether he was still in Maine or back in New York).
75 McKay, letter to Catherine Latimer, 19 February 1941, Box 1, Folder 4, Acquisitions 1925–1948, Schomburg Center Records, Schomburg Center, NYPL.
76 John Macrae, letter to Max Eastman, 12 February 1941, Box 8, Folder 259, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
77 McKay, letter to Mr. R. S. Gilmore [marked returned as “unclaimed”], 5 March 1941, Box 3, Folder 88, McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
78 A. Philip Randolph, letter to McKay, 4 April 1941, Box 6, Folder 173, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library. In his biography of McKay, Wayne Cooper quotes the praise of Harlem: Negro Metropolis in this letter but overlooks the mention of the “new book.” See Cooper, Claude McKay, 345.
79 Carlisle Smyth, letter to McKay, 8 May 1941, Box 6, Folder 195, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
80 Arcadia Toledano, letter to McKay, 21 May 1941, Box 6, Folder 202, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
81 Johnny Atkinson, letter to McKay, 10 June 1941, Box 1, Folder 1, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
82 Simon Williamson, letter to McKay, 19 June 1941, Box 1, Folder 2, Claude McKay Papers (Additions), Schomburg Center, NYPL.
83 McKay, letter to Williamson, 19 May 1941, Box 1, Folder 2, Claude McKay Papers (Additions), Schomburg Center, NYPL. In fact, the military coup that led to the Spanish Civil War took place on 17 July 1936.
84 Claude McKay, letter to Max Eastman, 29 March 1941, McKay Papers, Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University.
85 Max Eastman, letter to McKay, 20 April 1941, Box 3, Folder 69, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Librar
y.
86 Max Eastman, letter to McKay, 26 April 1941, Box 3, Folder 69, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
87 Max Eastman, letter to McKay, 28 May 1941, McKay Papers, Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University. The same day, Dutton wrote Eastman to discuss “the necessity of your coming into the office to have a talk with me or with our editor, Mr. Acklom, about the McKay book.” Elliott Macrae, letter to Eastman, 28 May 1941, Box 8, Folder 259, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
88 Simon Williamson, letter to McKay, 1 June 1941, Box 1, Folder 2, Claude McKay Papers (Additions), Schomburg Center, NYPL.
89 Max Eastman, handwritten note to McKay, n.d., Box 3, Folder 70, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
90 John Macrae, letter to McKay, 24 June 1941, Box 8, Folder 259, Claude McKay Collection, Beinecke Library.
91 Ibid.
92 McKay, letter to Carl Van Vechten, 21 July 1941, Carl Van Vechten Papers, Beinecke Library.
93 McKay, letter to Max Eastman, 28 July 1941, McKay Papers, Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University.
94 That is, the inscription in the copy of Roth’s Europe: A Book for America (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1919) in McKay’s papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is dated 11 September 1941.
95 McKay, letters to Samuel Roth, 6 October and 8 October 1941, Box 29, Folder 7, Samuel Roth Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
96 McKay, letter to Max Eastman, 30 July 1942, McKay Papers, Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University. In this letter, McKay requests a letter of recommendation for his application to the Office of War Information, where he was applying for a position.
97 McKay, letter to Ruth Raphael, 21 January 1942, Box 1, Folder 3, Claude McKay Papers (Additions), Schomburg Center, NYPL.
98 See Cooper, introduction to The Passion of Claude McKay, 40; and Ellen Tarry, The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman (New York: McKay Co., 1955), 187.
